iPhone 5 is out! iPhone 5 is out! Our favourite economist, Paul Krugman, was not as psyched as some, however (getting a quick economy lesson in on the side).

iPhone 5 – sans NFC

Many developers, marketers, companies and organisations were quietly excited about the possibilities of Near Field Communication technology (NFC). That was until Wednesday when it was announced that the new iPhone 5 won’t support it. Other handset manufacturers already do support NFC, but it’s unlikely that exciting new services will be developed without iOS devices being part of the ecosystem. Back to QR codes we go.

Target your tweeps, wherever they are

This week is not all about the iPhone 5, however. While the world went crazy explaining exactly how underwhelmed they were by the iPhone 5, Twitter released another step in their master plan towards big advertising bucks. They launched regional targeting of Promoted Tweets. You can now, in the UK, for instance, target a promoted tweet at someone specifically in London, or Manchester. This shows clearly where Twitter is focussing.

The developers are restless

So Twitter is clearly changing tack and opting to make its money like media companies of yore: Sell media space on their platform. As a result, they are restricting developers from developing services on their API that may compete with Twitter’s own core use case. Well, developers being developers have not just let this go by, and already there’s a competing platform – App.Net – that’s gaining traction. This week App.Net, which is not an ad-supported, but a paid for service, released some impressive stats, considering how expensive it is.

Digital first

Burberry has been one of the leading brands in digital over the last two years. This week, for London Fashion Week, Burberry launched a new flagship store that mimics their website: “We designed it like that because when you’re shopping at home online, you are on the sofa with your credit card. You don’t stand up and queue”, said Christopher Bailey, the firm’s chief creative officer.

Spotify joins the Web

At last. Spotify is about to launch a version of their service that plays in your browser. This will increase sharing of Spotify songs without a doubt. Hopefully they will allow the embedding of tracks, like Soundcloud does, soon as well.

Facebook – down but not out

During his Techrunch disrupt chat Mark Zuckerberg said a number of things. That Facebook will launch a search engine at some stage. That Instagram has passed the 100 million user mark (way faster than Facebook managed the same). That pinning their hopes on HTML5 was the biggest mistake they made. That they are seeing huge revenue growth in mobile via advertising. And that they will make a lot more from mobile than desktop users, because users spend a lot more time, and come back more often, on mobile.

Creatives of the Week – Sandro Engel and Holger Michel

Here’s a nice piece of interaction design from HAWK Hildesheim. Two students modified a set of pedestrian traffic lights so you could play a game of Pong with someone who’s waiting at the other side of the street. Brilliant!